Wednesday, February 05, 2014

Follow the Stories

The Oakland Raiders' cheerleaders suing the team over their frankly insane working conditions. (Note: Roughly 90% of the commentariat disdaining said cheerleaders for wanting to actually get paid would set their couches on fire if subjected to the working conditions of the average NFL cheerleader)

The group of Northwestern University football players who want to unionize.

The Eli Manning/New York Giants fake memorabilia scandal

These are all potentially important stories about football that got buried during the last two weeks by the Super Bowl, and which will continue to be buried going forward by debates about Peyton Manning's "legacy" and the Godawful proposal for expanded playoffs and-Exactly.Just something to think about as ESPN re-activates KiperBot 2014 from its cybernetic slumber in S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ (got the corporate synergy thing going there, natch) and the pre-draft hype chugs into gear. Stuff that has nothing to do with Blake Bortles - and seriously, "Blake Bortles" sounds like a minor character from a 1950s-era Superboy comic, like, I don't know, maybe the guy who moves into town with a rock'n'roll guitar and a kickin' pompadour who temporarily turns Lana Lang's head but who is ultimately revealed to be an alien robot intent on using those rockabilly licks to hypnotize innocent teenagers and turn them into crime-committing zombies, and-Sorry. Got a little off track there. But the point stands. The stories that you'll hear a lot of are the ones that make the NFL look good. The ones you won't hear a lot of, well, maybe they're the ones worth following up on.